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I don’t know if this is “better,” but remember how I wrote about the week where everything was bittersweet? Well, this week everything has been downright weird, to the point of surreal. I was leaving work the other night recounting one of this week’s incidents over the phone to a friend, when a security guard overheard me. I hung up as I signed out of the building and the security guard said, “Wow. You need your own reality show.”

So let’s recap the week of the weird.

Monday was one of my days off from work. I celebrated by dropping Daniel off at school and promptly falling back asleep in the guest room, despite my promises to myself that I would get stuff done. Around 11 or so, I heard Daniel running up and down the stairs and his little voice, talking to himself. I could even hear the swishing of his track pants. “Give me a minute, Danno, I’ll be up in a second,” I called. Then I stopped cold, remembering that he was in school. As I was remembering this, the little voice and the swishing pants continued running up and down the stairs. I grabbed the phone and called Ken at work. “When are you coming home?” I asked. “I don’t know, I’m fixing this machine and it’s going to take two to three hours to fix it,” he replied. “Why?” I lowered my voice and said “Something that’s Daniel but isn’t Daniel is in the house.” I was rolled away from the doorway, towards the wall, and heard the swishing track pants come in behind me. “What are you talking about? Daniel’s in school,” Ken replied. “I know!” I said. “It sounds like Daniel, but it’s not Daniel!” At that, whatever was behind me started crying really loudly, and angrily. “What the hell is that??” Ken asked. “It knows I know it’s not Daniel,” I said, squeezing my eyes as tightly closed as I could. I hung up and turned around to see what it was…

And that’s when I woke up. I was more jittery than a chihuahua on meth for the rest of the day. I hopeit was a dream, but for the rest of the day, this was me:

Tuesday: My birthday! Yay! But also Election Duty, booooo. Election Duty means a partner and I are assigned a ward or two in the city, tour a minimum of 20 precincts, check for shenanigans, and wait for the polls to close. We try to hit as many polling places as we can that have multiple precincts, and so our first stop was a school with 3 precincts voting inside. I go to the side table as my partner, the wonderful Brenda Gibbs, went to the middle table. We start with the same spiel: We’re from the State’s Attorney’s Office, any problems today? As soon as my table said “no,” I saw the look on Brenda’s face that clearly meant “PLZ HELP CRAZY TIMES”. (We’ve done Election Duty several times together and have developed these signals.) I walked over to the middle table, where one election judge has allegedly stabbed another with a pen. And the on duty police officer was shrugging his shoulders. We did not ascertain any stab wounds and left them in the capable hands of the police officer. The rest of Election Duty was calmer, aside from one precinct we had to visit three separate times to try to resolve issues. We usually get through Election Duty without filling out any incident reports. This time, we filled out three. Hooray.

And then it got even better. When I finally got home, the cat was meowing in a strange way. It wasn’t his usual “I’m hungry, feed me morons,” or even his indignant “I hate you people.” It sounded… almost… proud? My husband went down into the basement to investigate the food bowl and found a dead garter snake. We assume the cat killed it, but without an autopsy I can’t be sure. Now, normally in our house, my husband disposes of all the dead creatures that we stumble across, including the chipmunk that was definitely murdered by the cat. This time, despite it being my birthday, he informed me that he is actually terrified of snakes, even dead ones. Strangely, it didn’t bother me at all. I grabbed some paper towels, scooped up the dead snake, and folded the paper towels back over it. I then pretended to ‘toss’ the bundle at Ken. Apparently he wasn’t kidding when he said he is terrified of snakes and he screamed super loud, which I found hilarious. Anyway, I buried the snake in the backyard and finally went to bed.

I don’t think anything particularly weird happened on Wednesday, but I’m sure I’m just forgetting something or blocked it out. Or maybe the one-two punch of Election Duty and snake funerals was enough to carry over for Wednesday.

Thursday was my other day off. I dropped the dog off at the groomer’s and went out to see my mother-in-law. I encouraged her to join the group activity, which was a very modified version of Trivial Pursuit. Needless to say, we kicked some serious trivia ass together. The group leader decided the activity should conclude with everyone howling like wolves in honor of the full moon. Let me tell you, there is something indescribably weird about being in a room full of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients and a few visitors howling. Repeatedly.

I don’t know about Gloria, but I definitely needed a break.

So I took her out for lunch and took her shopping at Target. I told her to pick out something for her room. This is what ended up in the cart:

Mmmm… okay.

Picked dog up from groomer’s, picked up boy from parents, and was then informed that the turkey project was due the next day. You know, the turkey he brought home and we’re supposed to ‘disguise?’ Oh yeah Daniel, I totally remember you telling me about that. So I decided to help disguise the turkey by doing this:

That’s right, I actually sat down and knit a tiny sweater for a paper turkey. And the whole time, I thought, “I can’t believe this is my life. I can’t believe this is what I’ve been reduced to.” I then hot glued the tiny sweater and the other accessories chosen by Daniel to the turkey, resulting in this:

Behold, our magnificent creature.

I’m going to go ahead and guess no other kid has a turkey quite like ours.

Finally, today. I’ve had enough shenanigans to last me a while. I get to my office and, like always, it is freezing. I have previously threatened to set my garbage can on fire, solely to generate heat. My boss walked in to chat and said, “Holy cow! Why do you have it so cold in here?!” I told him I only wished we had individual thermostats. He walked right over to the heat register, opened up a panel I had never seen, and set the thermostat from “actively blowing out cold air” to “producing moderately semi-warm air, this room has high ceilings, what do you expect.” I would just like to point out that I have worked here for over four years and no one has ever shown me the secret thermostat panel before. I am peeved.

And I’m hoping I’m done with weirdness for the rest of the week, maybe even the month. Then again, since it’s my life, and the security guard had a good point, maybe I’ll be tapped for a reality show.